Monthly Archives: December 2011

Last night I attended a party recognizing El Informe De David (El Periódico Regional de Chiriquí). It was held at The David Fair Grounds. Lilliam and I had a great time and really enjoyed meeting the people behind El Informe De David.

If you have not yet seen this new newspaper, it is worth picking up. Especially for all of the Chiriquí Chatter readers that want to practice their Spanish. The publication is in Spanish and designed for Chiricanos. You can even read it without leaving the house by clicking HERE.

It was nice to meet Aruel and his wife Diana, who are the driving force behind El Informe. I thought it was interesting to learn that a couple from Rumania, that have lived in Canada and upon moving to Chiriquí realized the importance of a newspapers for this province and filled the void. In the following photo, Aruel and his wife are on the left and Felix Estrada is on the right.Continue reading El Periódico Regional de Chiriquí→

Thieves have been exceptionally busy in Potrerillos this month. Another dangerous home invasion occurred including an incident where the perpetrator was apprehend while attempting to unlawfully enter the private property of a well respected American business owner who operates a K-9 service. Also a theft reports involving an American in the parking lot of El Terronal Mall, plus stolen property has been recovered.

New Case:

On the night of 28-December-2011 @ 9:10-PM, an unknown individual described as a Panamanian male attempted to unlawfully enter the property of a North American Business owner, the same women who is experiencing harassment from another suspect. This time the perpetrator was caught by units from the Dolega PD who quickly responded to the call for help.

Information provided indicates that the suspect was a wanted man who recently escaped from an unspecified detention facility that houses drug offenders. Attached is the actual communications received in the Potrerillos Neighborhood Watch Office.

When I purchased my iPad I quickly learned that I needed a way to listen to music or play Angry Birds without bothering everyone else. Often Lilliam is watching something on the TV and I am using the iPad.

Shortly after I bought the iPad I purchased a cheap pair of earbuds. Somewhere around July of this year, they disappeared. I looked everywhere for them to no avail. In December, I saw a pair of Sennheiser earbuds ar PanaFoto. They were around $59.

I thought maybe I could find some on the Internet for a better price and set out to do so. After spending about a day tied to Google, I located some Klipsch Promedia for about $35 on Amazon. After a few hours of thought, I clicked “buy”. It cost me a couple dollars tax in the U.S. and about $13 to get them to Panama bringing my price to $50. Shhhhh! Don’t tell Lilliam.

Today, I was getting ready to recommend them to a friend and looked them up again on the Amazon site. What a surprise. Todays price is $89.99.

These ear buds also have a built in microphone so they can work with Skype on the iPad. The sound is great and they are much better than the cheap ones that disappeared. Sometimes I get lucky.

I was more worried about this WordPress update because it was a larger product change than many of the previous updates. I was worried enough to invest in a new Back-Up plugin to back up everything before I made the upgrade.

My old backup program had not received positive comments on 3,3 and I didn’t want to take a chance. In the past I have lost the blog once and had to reload the posts by hand. Now that Chiriqui Chatter has over 6 years of history, that is not possible anymore.

This plugin required me to purchase it. Where most WordPress plugins are free this one isn’t. However, after looking at all it does and the simplicity with which it does it, I decided the price was a small price to pay for a little piece of mind. Its retail price is $75 for one year of updates.

I purchased it yesterday, backup up the site this morning and upgraded to WordPress 3.3 after the backup was completed.

I now have a few more publishing capabilities I can use and some may start appearing as I understand the need and find an appropriate use for them.

I did make a couple more changes to the sidebar today. I added a list of current posts and also added the Categories and Archives to the sidebar. Since the Archives and Categories are now drop downs, I saw no reason not to duplicate them in the sidebar as well as the footer.

I have found one thing that is not working in the new theme. For some reason the Google translate no longer translates the comments. In fact, it a post is selected it is no longer translated. Only the front page of the blog. That is a real disappointment. Lilliam pointed that fact out and I hope it is a solvable problem.

Let me know if you find other past features that no longer work or you can’t find something. The current format should now be pretty stable. I am not planning on making any more changes unless problems crop up.

UPDATE Dec 30 @ 13:50: I think I have fixed the translation Problem. I am not sure why it works, but it does. I added the translation widget in the sidebar and in the footer as well. For some reason this forces the translation to continue when you leave the front page and it didn’t before.

WordPress has put out a new release 3.3. It has many new features and I am unable to use them because I am still on WordPress 3.2.1. I have a couple Plugins that quit functioning when I moved to 3.2.1 and I am in the process of looking for a new theme that is compatible with 3.3.

This is a little heads up that some remodeling will probably begin and with all remodeling there can be disruptions. If I am lucky, the changes will not affect most of the blog, but I can’t guarantee that. The look and feel may change.

I try to stay pretty current with system upgrades. Not only do they add features, but they also fix old bugs and close security holes.

If you have any suggestions as to how I can make Chiriqui Chatter more easy to navigate or problems you have run into, drop me a note. I will take suggestions into consideration.

2012 is coming and I might as well put some new paint on this aging blog. I wish that I could give myself some upgrades as well, but will be content with updating the blog.

UPDATE: 5:00 P.M – I think the theme change is now close to complete. It was a little more painful than I expected. I think I am satisfied with the Twenty Eleven Default theme. I had a few snags and things aren’t exactly as I want them, but maybe I can smooth out a few rough edges in the coming days.

Differences –

I moved the sidebar back to the right side. It just seemed to look better to me, but it can be on either side.

The name of the blog is no longer in the header photo.

The “Pages Titles” that appear below the header photo no longer contains a page for Links. For some reason, with the move to the new theme, the Links page was messed up. Important links are now at the bottom of the page on the right side. If I can figure out how to build a Links Page, I will re-install it. Until then, look below the posts for the Links Area.

There was no Contact template on this theme, so I added email contact information to the About Page.

I did add an Email subscription capability in the sidebar. I have avoided that in the past, because I think RSS is more efficient, but I have had several requests for it, so it is now there.

I changed the header photo. It is still in Parque Cervantez, but it now features some traditional Panamanian dress as opposed to the fountain.

Obviously the display colors are different. It is now white with a gray background. I played with a Black based background and it can be done if it is preferred. To see what that might look like you can go HERE. Feel free to give me feed back if the darker scheme is better in your opinion.

This theme makes reading the blog on a mobile device or an iPad a little easier. It puts the sidebar below all of the current posts. If you use an iPad, do you think it is better?

That is all for the moment. I think I will let this settle in a bit before I do anything else. I am tired and will postpone the upgrade to 3.3 of WordPress for another day.